Formula Fixer

Working Days Left in 2026: NETWORKDAYS & WORKDAY

Updated 2026-11-03

Year-end planning usually comes down to one question: how many working days are actually left? Weekends, Thanksgiving and the Christmas break remove more days than people expect. This guide shows the formulas, with late-2026 dates you can paste straight into a holiday list. Everything here works the same way in Excel and Google Sheets.

The quick answer for late 2026

From Monday 19 October to Thursday 31 December 2026 there are 54 weekdays (Monday to Friday).

Your own number depends on which holidays your organisation actually gives, plus any shutdown between Christmas and New Year, so build your own holiday list as shown below and let the formula do the counting.

Step 1: Make a holiday list

Put your holidays in one column, one date per cell, for example on a sheet called Lists in A2:A12. Then name the range so formulas stay readable: in Excel use Formulas > Define Name; in Google Sheets use Data > Named ranges. Call it Holidays. Dates you may need for the rest of 2026 (check your employer's own list):

Enter real dates, not text. If a date sits on the left of the cell by default, it is probably text and the formulas will return #VALUE! or ignore it. =DATE(2026,12,25) always produces a real date.

Step 2: Count working days with NETWORKDAYS

=NETWORKDAYS(start_date, end_date, [holidays])

Working days left this year, counted from today:

=NETWORKDAYS(TODAY(), DATE(2026,12,31), Holidays)

NETWORKDAYS counts both the start and the end date when they are working days, so Monday to Friday of one week returns 5. If today should not count, use TODAY()+1 as the start.

A holiday that falls on a weekend is not subtracted twice: NETWORKDAYS only removes holidays that land on a working day, so you can safely list every holiday.

Step 3: Working days in each month

With the first day of a month in A2 (for example 1 November 2026):

=NETWORKDAYS(A2, EOMONTH(A2, 0), Holidays)

EOMONTH(A2, 0) returns the last day of the same month, so one formula copied down works for every month. For the last quarter of 2026:

That is 66 weekdays in Q4 2026: 62 after US federal holidays, or 64 after UK bank holidays.

Step 4: Find a deadline with WORKDAY

WORKDAY works the other way round. Give it a start date and a number of working days, and it returns the finishing date.

=WORKDAY(start_date, days, [holidays])

Example: a supplier quotes 10 working days from Friday 20 November 2026. With the US holidays in your list:

=WORKDAY(DATE(2026,11,20), 10, Holidays)

The answer is Monday 7 December 2026, because Thanksgiving and the weekends are skipped. The start date itself is not counted. Use a negative number to count backwards, for example to find the date files must be sent so they arrive five working days before a launch date in B2:

=WORKDAY(B2, -5, Holidays)

Format the result cell as a date. If you see a five-digit number instead, that is the date's serial number and only the format is wrong.

Step 5: Other weekends with the .INTL versions

Not everyone works Monday to Friday. NETWORKDAYS.INTL and WORKDAY.INTL take a weekend argument:

=NETWORKDAYS.INTL(start_date, end_date, [weekend], [holidays])

Example, a six-day week (Sunday off) for the rest of 2026:

=NETWORKDAYS.INTL(TODAY(), DATE(2026,12,31), 11, Holidays)

The text form is handy for part-time schedules. Someone who works Monday, Wednesday and Friday has the pattern "0101011", so you can count their remaining shifts or plan their deadlines with WORKDAY.INTL.

Year-end targets: what is needed per working day

To see how much still has to be sold, produced or billed on each remaining working day, divide the gap by the days left. With the annual target in B1 and the year-to-date result in B2:

=(B1 - B2) / NETWORKDAYS(TODAY(), DATE(2026,12,31), Holidays)

For a simple calendar countdown, subtraction is enough: =DATE(2026,12,25) - TODAY() gives the days until Christmas (format the cell as a number).

Common errors and fixes

For simple day counts, months and ages, see how to calculate days, workdays and age between dates. Planning next year? Our 2027 calendar guide lists the 2027 US and UK holidays with formulas.

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